OK...point #1. If any part of your slab is 'below grade' the ENTIRE THING is graded as 'below grade'. Personally I would pick different flooring for the 'wet' rooms such as the bathrooms and laundry. The reason: 'water proof' flooring is expensive. So WHY pay for the entire basement to be covered in 'water proof' when only a few hundred square feet actually 'need it'. The other thing is: a floating floor is really all you want to play with. Tiles in bathrooms/laundry room can be adhered to the concrete, the rest can be floated. The basics for ANY floating floor is the same. You must have a vapour barrier (not always underpadding) and you must always have a WELL PREPARED concrete slab that is flat (no wonky subfloors for a floating floor...ever). A laminate floating floor and a vinyl floating floor and a cork floating floor (and even a linoleum floating floor) all require the same thing. And the mechanism to install is always a 'click-together' system. An engineered hardwood can be floated but it almost always requires glue on the seams. Again, all of the same PREPARATION is required. So go ahead and start paying for the concrete slab to be fixed up so that your flooring of choice can be laid down as soon as you can. The 'nightmare' the sales guys are talking about relates to installation and moisture. They are TRYING to get you to purchase the product THEY NEED to move. Yep. I would hazard a guess that these guys have been given 'targets' to meet and/or they have been offered bonuses for moving a certain TYPE of product (too much in the warehouse is costing the company TOO MUCH money). In a nutshell, the reason why you are getting 4 different opinions is because you spoke to 4 different salespeople with 4 different 'company agendas'. That's it. There is no mystery in that. My questions for you (if I were your sales person): 1. What is your budget (do NOT fudge numbers with sales people...it pisses them off and makes them less likely to get the RIGHT floor)? 2. What is your FAMILY situation? Animals? Landscaping issues such as pools, etc? 3. What are YOUR expectations? Can you accept the limitations of certain flooring if it gets you the LOOK that you want for the price you are able to pay?

Most high-end vinyl products have a glue down option: Karndean comes to mind. They also have loose lay. This is when the PERIMETER of the room is glued and the rest of the planks are tight fit to the one next to it. Start with the $7/sf products. That's your starting line. The glue down planks will be about $1/sf CHEAPER than the floating (they do not have to pay the patent-licensing fee on the click edge) but the glue will more than make up for that price. The installation for glue down is more because it is more labour intensive. Tell the builder to have the slab PREPARED for glue down resilient flooring (resilient in this case is due to the FLEXIBILITY and NOT the wearability). I would think a glue down vinyl will cost the same as a glue down hardwood. Just so you know.

Hayes oak is beachy/ drift wood vibe. Diffucult to get a picture of it. It is lighter and is not as uneven in person. It is also much lighter. But definetely not white oak. Looks lime Cortec has quite a few light oak choices in various collections. This time maybe just but one box and lay it out. We were lucky in that we actually saw Hayes in a home. And, we were going in a whole other color wave before seeing it.

There are so many variables that it is a hard question to answer. In my opinion Karndean has the best looking floors. Their beefiest are their Art Select and Da Vinci lines, which have a 30 mil wear layer and come with a 20 year commercial warranty. They will be able to handle whatever you throw at it. Those are glue down formats. If you want rigid core look at their Van Gogh line (20 mil wear layer, 15 year commercial warranty), and Korlok line (20 mil wear layer, 15 year commercial warranty, visuals aren't as good). About half of the Van Gogh line comes in rigid core. All of the ones I mentioned come with a Lifetime Residential Warranty. Happy hunting!